I have a funny question for you.
Funny? Oh God…

One of the titles on your webpage that you gave yourself is Feminist, care to explain?
Oh. Well you know, it’s feminism its not that complicated. People think, ‘oh feminist, you know you have to burn bras and stuff’. No. Feminism is just an assertion that women have just as much equal rights, should have just as much equal right opportunity as men. Now for the first time in history, this is actually happening in a small part of the world right?

So When I say I’m a feminist, I’m not gonna objectify women in my music. I just believe that the state of the world, or even the state in Canada and United States, the first world, women are relegated to serfdom.

So when I say I’m a feminist, I say that part of my personal struggle is to fight so that women are equal or seen as equal or treated as equal in hip hop and in society. That sounds like a big big plan but you know, some people like to be luke-warm. I’m hot and cold.

Everyone has to make their money and everyone has a different reality that they came up in, but I don’t see why hip-hop should be exempt from political correctness, if you want to use that word. I don’t really like that word.

I don’t think it should be exempt from the rigours or the criticisms that general society is subjected to all the time. But I’m particularly radical … We’ll leave it at that.

It’s really rare you find people who are actually doing what they want to do, following their dreams.
‘cause it’s not easy. A lot of people like doing things and a lot of people have fun doing things. A lot of people like doing music, you have to be able to do it when you’re depressed, when you’re you know exalted with happiness. You have to do it every moment of everyday. You have to be willing to do it that much and that’s how I feel about music.


I feel that your rap is more like poetry, more conscious rap. So how do you balance between, the success of mainstream and keeping an honest front?
It’s funny because a lot of people ask me that but I never really saw it as an issue. ‘Cause you know there’s like two narratives that people try to make up for hip-hop. There’s the narrative that has evolved from jazz, from funk and funk and bebop evolved into hiphop. So that’s one narrative.


The other narrative is that it sprung out of the ghetto and misery and the gangster way of life and stuff like that. So there’s two opposing narratives; because there’s a culture narrative and then there’s a social rebellion narrative.


So I never feel an issue with it because I’m not really concerned about fitting in a box. I just sort of go ahead, myself, musically and I’m not afraid to discuss issues. I just go with it because at the end of the day I have to live with myself, right? And I can’t live with an image.


So where do you see conscious rap in the future?
Oh, I mean, wha’t I’d like to do more than anything is find like-minded artists. I’ve found some, artists that make conscious music or just soulful music. Because if your music is soulful and it has depth, it’s already conscious. I mean, Tupac was conscious, Nas is conscious, Nina Simone was conscious. So it’s like, I just see MindPeaceLoveas a resurgence of the Motown sort of vibe.

What I want it to be would be a new Motown vibe or a new love-vibe that you can put back into the music. Taking the whole philosophy of peace and love, the whole progressive vibe of the music in that space, taking that ethos and bringing it forward by just connecting artist who are like-minded, you know what I’m saying?